Many consumers enjoy carbonated beverages. In particular, carbonated beverages contained in so-called pop-top cans (“beverage containers”) such as soda or beer are particularly popular. Typically, such beverage containers are shaped as cylinders that have a sealed opening on the beverage container's top. Using a tab on the top of the beverage container, the consumer may pull back on one end of the tab, creating a lever effect that pushes the other end of the tab into the beverage container's top, causing the tab's other end to puncture a pre-scored seal around the opening. Generally, the portion of the beverage container's top that was within the pre-scored portion bends into the beverage container's interior, which exposes the opening and thereby creates a rim around the opening, the rim being the portion of the beverage container's top surrounding the opening. With the opening thus exposed, the consumer can drink the beverage out of the beverage container's opening.
However, such beverage containers fail to provide for a way to reseal the opening. As such, in a matter of seconds or minutes the carbonation in the beverage is lost to the atmosphere and the beverage loses some or all of its appeal. In some circumstances, the beverage's carbonation may reach an equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere and the pleasant effects of the carbonation may be effectively lost. In such circumstances, a user may determine that the beverage tastes dissatisfactory because of inadequate carbonation. In modern parlance, some users refer to a carbonated beverage that has lost its beneficial level of carbonation as “flat.”
Additional problems are associated with non-carbonated items in beverage containers. Without a way to reseal the beverage containers, items such as fruit juice, applesauce, or smoothies could be spoiled by outside elements such as debris, insects, or air.
Therefore, a need exists to reseal beverage containers and preserve the beverage containers' contents.
Attempts at such a solution have been made. In particular, the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,321,927 to Cavella, incorporated by reference in its entirety herein, discloses a beverage container with a resealable opening in its top. While this disclosure does provide consumers with a resealable beverage container option, its design requires manufacturing entirely new beverage containers, which might be costly to the beverage industry. This disclosure also suffers from a relatively complex resealing design.
Another attempt can be seen with respect to U.S. Pat. No. 6,722,518 to Bartz, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein. This disclosure generally provides for a beverage container tab cover that may be rotated to reseal a beverage container's opening. Unfortunately, this disclosure's cover is configured to attach to a small area on the back of the beverage container's tab. Such a design makes this disclosure less likely to provide consumers with a consistent and easily used resealable option, as installing the cover and using the tab/cover combination might be cumbersome and the cover might be prone to falling off of the tab.
Still another attempt to solve the problem can be seen with respect to U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0138178 A1 filed by Erickson, which is incorporated in its entirety herein. This disclosure also generally provides for a beverage container tab cover that may be rotated to reseal a beverage container's opening. Unfortunately, however, this disclosure's design provides for a non-removable cover that may be attached to a rivet on a beverage container's top. Such a design not only limits the user's ability to reuse the cover, it might also require a high degree of dexterity to properly install the cover.
As such, none of these in existence comprise beneficial characteristics described in the following disclosure. Thus, there remains a need for a method and apparatus for sealing an opened beverage container.